For a heartbeat even the laughter disappeared. Then the lot exploded with it, men striking tables and repeating the word apologize as though the boy had invented a new kind of joke. Garrett's face arranged itself into a smile that frightened people who knew him. He extended his hand, palm wet with spit, and made the terms uglier: if the boy failed, he would crawl the length of the lot on his hands and knees.
Owen looked at the motorcycle beyond Garrett's shoulder. Black Fury sat on its stand beneath the open garage door, a 1972 Harley-Davidson Shovelhead whose black paint shone even under a layer of highway dust. The machine had been silent for three days. Owen had heard something inside that silence that nobody else appeared to hear.
"Deal," he said, and shook Garrett's hand.
To understand why a boy who had eleven dollars in his pocket would agree to that bargain, it was necessary to understand a garage on the other side of Detroit, an older man with patient hands, and a family that had lost nearly everything except the knowledge passed from one generation to the next.
Four years earlier, before the garage was padlocked and before Owen began counting grocery money in single dollar bills, Thomas Fletcher used to open his shop at six every morning. The building stood near the intersection of Gratiot Avenue and Conant Street, a cinder-block rectangle wedged between a vacant lot and a tire warehouse. On rainy mornings, water found its way through three different places in the corrugated roof. On hot days, the building held heat like an oven, and Thomas worked with both doors open to invite whatever breeze the city cared to send.
There was no illuminated sign, polished waiting room, or receptionist. The lettering on the front window had been painted by Thomas himself and had begun to peel long before Owen learned to read it. FLETCHER MOTOR REPAIR, it said, followed by a phone number whose final two digits were barely visible. Most customers did not need the number. Someone who could not afford another diagnosis simply asked around until another driver told them where Thomas worked.
People arrived towing failures that larger shops had abandoned. There was a lawn tractor that ate belts because its frame had been twisted by an old collision, a fishing boat motor seized with salt and neglect, and a delivery van whose owner had been told to replace the entire transmission. Thomas considered each machine as if it were telling him a story in a language he happened to know. He listened before he moved. His first question was usually not what the customer thought had broken, but what the machine had sounded like before it stopped.